Page 81 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
He goes upstairs to Susan.
“I want you to stay,” he says when she answers the door. “Even if you and Nathaniel are never okay again, I still want you to stay. I know I don’t have any right to ask, not after—” He hadn’t meant to say that last part, but now there’s no taking it back.
“Not after what?”
“After I left you. After I left you and Michael.”
Susan draws in a sharp breath. “You didn’t leave us.”
The version of the story that Susan tells herself is that what Patrick’s aunt and uncle did was as good as kicking him out. Andthat’s true, in a way: they made sure he wouldn’t come back but they kept their hands clean. He isn’t sure any of that matters. “You thought I was dead or in the hospital.”
Susan opens her mouth like she’s going to deny it, as if she hadn’t told him so at the time. “We knew there was a good reason you didn’t call us.”
“I didn’t call you for weeks.” Patrick can’t even remember that time without a hot wash of shame. The whole time he’d been at Mrs. Kaplan’s, he’d known he should call, but he couldn’t make himself do it, didn’t know what lie he could possibly tell. What if they’d seen his name in the paper? What if they hadn’t? “He was so mad. So were you.”
“Not at you.” She scrubs the sleeve of her bathrobe against her eyes.
“That’s such a lie.”
“Patrick, I don’t know what you want me to say. I was mad at you. I haven’t been mad at you about that in ten years. As soon as I knew you were okay, it was obvious that something terrible must have happened and I could make a few guesses about what it was.”
“Michael didn’t have any idea.”
Susan looks at him for a minute, searching his face and finding something there that Patrick would prefer not to think about. “Michael forgave you. Or—no—he understood.”
“He never said anything.”
“The two of you never said anything to one another! Did you expect a heart to heart? God, it’s so shitty that you can’t be having this conversation with him.”
Her arms are folded across her chest and her eyes are wet. He can’t take it, so he pulls her into a hug. “The shittiest,” he agrees.
“Do you really want me to stay?” she says into his shirt.
“Yeah. It’s good,” he says, so severe an understatement it’s nearly a lie. “It makes me happy,” he adds, feeling like he’sstanding over a pit. “I wish you were able to be in San Francisco with Michael, all of you together, but instead—”
“I hated living so far from you. So did Michael. He was sure we could lure you to San Francisco eventually.”
Patrick remembers all the comments about the food, the culture, the climate. He remembers Michael’s strangled attempts to explain that San Francisco is a great place for “You know. Men who…” accompanied by a vague gesture. Patrick thought these were pointed jabs, not sales pitches.
“What happens when you meet someone new?” Patrick asks, not sure it’s a question he’s even allowed to ask.
“There’s room here, don’t you think?” She pulls back and looks at him squarely. “Look. You’ll be there for her first day of kindergarten and when she drops out of college and runs off with a painter. You can bail her out of jail and hold her hand while she gets a tattoo. If you want to be there, you’re there. Okay?”
Patrick tries to say that he wants to be there, but all he can do is nod and look away.
Susan follows Patrick down to the shop. The door’s still locked but the lights are on, and when Patrick opens the door, he can hear Jefferson Airplane playing from the back. A warm breeze blows through the shop.
“He’ll be in the yard,” Patrick says.
“What yard?” Susan asks, but she follows him.
Nathaniel is in a t-shirt and jeans, digging a hole in the center of the empty space he cleared yesterday.
“I bet you bled right through the bandage,” Patrick says. “What are you doing, anyway?”
Nathaniel doesn’t look up. “Planting a tree. It’s depressing out here.”
The tree, if you can call it that, is two feet high and sad looking. “Where do you even buy a tree in Manhattan?”
